at the
point of the bayonet--the enemy were advancing in column. Wayne
instantly took post on the right of his position, to cover the retreat
of the left, led by Colonel Hampton, the second in command. The latter
was tardy, and incautiously paraded his troops in front of their fires
so as to be in full relief. The enemy rushed on without firing a gun;
all was the silent but deadly work of the bayonet and cutlass. Nearly
three hundred of Hampton's men were killed or wounded, and the rest
put to flight. Wayne gave the enemy some well-directed volleys, and
then retreating to a small distance, rallied his troops and prepared
for further defence. The British, however, contented themselves with
the blow they had given and retired with very little loss, taking with
them between seventy and eighty prisoners, several of them officers,
and eight baggage wagons, heavily laden.

General Smallwood, who was to have co-operated with Wayne, was within
a mile of him at the time of his attack, and would have hastened to
his assistance with his well-known intrepidity, but he had not the
corps under his command with which he had formerly distinguished
himself, and his raw militia fled in a panic at the first sight of a
return party of the enemy. Wayne was deeply mortified by the result of
this affair, and finding it severely criticised in the army, demanded
a court-martial, which pronounced his conduct everything that was to
be expected from an active, brave, and vigilant officer; whatever
blame there was in the matter fell upon his second in command.

On the 21st, Sir William Howe made a rapid march high up the
Schuylkill, on the road leading to Reading, as if he intended either
to capture the military stores deposited there, or to turn the right
of the American army. Washington kept pace with him on the opposite
side of the river up to Pott's Grove, about thirty miles from
Philadelphia.

The movement on the part of Howe was a mere feint. No sooner had he
drawn Washington so far up the river, than by a rapid countermarch on
the night of the 22d, he got to the ford below, threw his troops
across on the next morning and pushed forward for Philadelphia. By the
time Washington was apprised of this counter-movement, Howe was too
far on his way to be overtaken by harassed, barefooted troops, worn
out by constant marching. Feeling the necessity of immediate
reinforcements, he wrote on the same day to Putnam, at Peekskill: "I
desire that with